Name: Pixels and Penchants
Rating: It will probably hit M eventually.
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Pairing/Characters: Pete/Claudia, Myka/H.G., Artie, Leena.
Summary: When an artefact hunt results in Claudia being given a surprise trinket in exchange for her help with a teenage boy's computer, she and Pete find themselves fighting their way through not just one video game, struggling to survive in a world of pixels and bonding in the process.
Author's Note: I'm exploiting my extensive gaming knowledge and love of games to write this, so there will be quite a few references – some obscure and some not – but you don't, by any stretch of the imagination, need to know the games to read the fic. Onwards!
One
Claudia skids down the road and to a halt at the end, all but smacking into a lamppost. She has her Farnsworth out in seconds and as soon as Pete's face appears on the screen she shouts, "I lost him!"
"Double back, meet me at the car," Pete's voice replies. He isn't looking into the Farnsworth, just holding it instead and shouting towards Claudia's voice. "He can't have gotten far!"
Claudia leans against the lamppost and breathes deeply. If there's one thing she hates about this job, it's all the running around. Sure, it's fun and exciting, but it leaves her with a stitch and sweaty armpits and all the uncomfortable side effects of running in circles for an hour escaping a snowman who's trying to eat her face. Or was that Pete's face? All the artefact hunts are all blurring together.
She trudges back to the car, tired. She's not unfit by a long chalk, but there's fit and then there's able to run a marathon a day for a week and that's what this week has been like. She's looking forward to getting back to Leena's, sinking into a hot, hot bath and letting all her aches and pains drain down the plughole.
"Where's Wilson?"
Claudia makes a vague gesture as she climbs into the car next to Myka, who had spoken. "I lost him."
Myka sighs. "Ugh," she says. Myka moves to get out of the car but Claudia puts a hand on her arm.
"Pete's on it."
They turn their heads in time to see Pete slam to the ground on top of the middle aged guy whose cat is currently wearing the artefact they're after.
"Ha!" Pete exclaims, straddling the guy's back. He looks at Claudia, who climbs out of the car and goes to join him.
"You don't have to enjoy it so much," Myka comments as she climbs out of the other side. Pete gives her a look and holds the guy down as Claudia drops to a crouch in front of him.
"Okay, dude," she says, "where's the moggy?"
The guy looks like he's about to cry so Claudia sighs. "Look, dude, we're not gonna hurt Scruffs. We're just gonna... talk to her."
Pete gives her a look that clearly reads WTF so she quickly adds, "All we want is her collar!"
The guy nods, tearing up a bit and Pete clambers off his back. "She's at my sister's," Wilson says, sitting up. "I was scared you'd hurt her."
"We're not going to hurt her," says Myka. "Give us the address."
Wilson's sister lives in a small two-bedroom house at the edge of town and by the time they get there, Pete is muttering that his job is over. He pinned the guy, he should be allowed to go home. Myka fixes him with a steely glare and he trails after them into the house, against his wishes.
"Scruffs?" says Maggie Wilson, Wilson's sister. "Oh, yes. I think she's upstairs..." She looks at her brother, who nods that this is okay, and Pete, Myka and Claudia make their way quietly upstairs and into her son's bedroom.
Kyle, the boy in question, is sitting at his desk playing video games on his computer. He's about thirteen and as soon as the strangers come into his room he turns the monitor off and goes bright red. Claudia eyes him, because she's pretty sure she saw a naked blue chick on the screen.
The cat, Scruffs, is sitting on his pillow, looking majestic. Her black fur is shiny and sleek and the gold collar around her neck glints under the light of Kyle's ceiling lamp.
"Okay..." Pete approaches the cat slowly, dropping to a crouch. "C'mere, you."
The cat's hackles rise and her green eyes pierce his. "I am the embodiment of Bastet." The words are coming from the cat, but she's not speaking them.
"Oh, crap," says Pete.
The cat launches itself at him and he hits the floor when it lands on his chest. "Pete!" shouts Claudia. She pulls her tesla out and aims it at the cat, but she's hesitant to shoot because it'll shock Pete too. Instead, she tosses the weapon at Myka and runs forward to shove the cat from Pete's chest.
The cat dislodges, taken by surprise, and leaps up to land on the desk next to Kyle. Myka shoots at it and misses, instead hitting the tower of Kyle's computer on the shelf above his desk.
Everything fries and it goes off. The cat hits the floor and leaps at Myka.
Myka flails as Bastet hits her square in the face, scratching down her cheek. Pete grabs his own tesla and shoots, hitting the cat, which falls to the floor, twitching and then sinks into unconsciousness.
Claudia stares at it like it's about to attack again, then crawls forward and pulls the collar off from around its neck. Its hackles lower and its breathing evens out, then it comes around and runs away out of the room.
She tosses the collar at Myka, who catches it with one hand while she touches her face gingerly with the other.
"You better get that checked out," says Claudia, leaning against the foot of Kyle's bed, next to Pete who's still lying on the floor.
"You fried my computer!" shouts Kyle.
Claudia stares at him. "Priorities!" she exclaims, then she sighs. "Don't worry. I'll spring for the repairs."
"Nah, you can fix it for him, right, Claud?" says Pete. "Claud's a whiz at computers."
Claudia gapes at him. What the hell happened to that lovely soak in the bath she had planned? "Sure," she says, smiling serenely, "but only when I have my trusty sidekick." She claps him on the shoulder and his face falls.
Ha. Checkmate.
"Really?" Kyle looks really excited so Claudia gives up on her plotting to get out of this. "Here." He holds a trinket out towards Claudia. "I'll give you this if you repair my computer!"
Claudia takes the trinket and eyes it. It's just a desk ornament. "I'm good, kid, thanks," she says, but Kyle refuses to take it back so she sighs, puts it in her pocket and ignores the look Pete is giving her, the one that says, "Haha, this kid has a crush on you."
Three hours later the sun is going down, Myka is getting stitches at the hospital and Claudia is trying to fix Kyle's computer while standing awkwardly on the desk because she refused to unplug everything, bring the tower down, plug it all back in and then work on it, insisting it would only take a few minutes to repair.
Kyle is asleep on his bed instead of helping.
"Pass me the screwdriver," says Claudia and Pete wakes up from where he was asleep on the desk.
"Which one?"
Claudia glares at him. "I don't know, Pete? Maybe the one I've asked for six times so far?"
"I was asleep..."
She grits her teeth. "Phillip's head."
He hands her a screwdriver and she unscrews part of the motherboard, still trying to work out which bits got fried. She'd first thought it was the power supply, but now she's not so sure.
"How long is this going to take?" Pete says, with a sigh.
Claudia glares at him. "You're the one who volunteered me for this." She moves some things around, tweaks them in the way only she can and says, "Okay turn it on."
Pete flicks the switch on the mains socket behind the desk and Claudia presses the button on the front of the tower. It splutters, stutters and then powers back down.
"Damn it," she mutters. "It's completely fried."
"If anyone can fix it it's you, Claud," says Pete, yawning, which just serves to make Claudia yawn right back at him.
She pokes some parts of the computer, moodily. "You know, you're useless around this stuff," she says. "I should have asked Myka to help. At least she knows which screwdriver I want."
Pete rolls his eyes as she reaches for a wire inside the case. "I bet she does," he says.
"Now what is that supposed to mean?" Claudia says, and turns around. Her hand slips, she hits a live wire and an electric shock slices through her.
She jerks and flails and Pete shouts, "Claudia!" and dives forward to grab her by the back of the jeans to pull her away from the computer.
The shock flows straight through her and into him, but instead of releasing her he grips on harder even as everything goes white around them and they disappear in a zap of electricity.
The computer turns on and prompts for a password.
Kyle yawns and sits up. "Oh, cool, she fixed it!" he exclaims, and rushes across.
He doesn't even notice the singe on the carpet.